


Consensus ad idem

by destinyofshipwreck



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Chronic Pain, F/M, Fluff, The great no-sex pact of 2016
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-01 01:42:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13987812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinyofshipwreck/pseuds/destinyofshipwreck
Summary: Tessa leans back in her chair and wraps her arms around herself. Every nerve in Scott’s body is screaming to reach out for her. Anticipating his next move, she looks him in the eye and says, “We can’t have any distractions, Scott, not if we mean it.”“But only until PyeongChang.”“Only until after PyeongChang.”“But, like,rightafter.”“Yeah.”“Okay,” says Scott, taking a deep breath. “I think we can handle it, if you think we can.”





	1. Chapter 1

His heart skips a beat when he gets a text from Tessa for the first time in a couple of months, and it’s not just a friendly-though-distant check-in, but a detailed and specific proposal. She wants him to visit her in Toronto, if he wants, to talk about how it might work if they decided to try again, which is not to say that he has to say yes to her, only that she would like him to hear her out, if he's interested, or if he thinks he might be interested, but, you know, no pressure for a decision either way.

❧

Scott, who has scarcely ever been able to keep a secret, bursts like a dam the minute he walks in Tessa’s door and confesses everything: that the break had been the worst, most agonizing period of his life, that he missed her every day, that he never knew how much he loved her until she was gone, that he needed her, that he couldn’t live without her, that he was so afraid he’d lost her forever, that he could barely bring himself to even text her because what if she didn’t want to hear from him, that he couldn’t believe his luck when she invited him here to talk about coming back, that he was such an idiot, et cetera.

“Why do you think I wrote to you?” asks Tessa, bemused.

“You missed the thrill of competition? You missed four hours at the gym every day and compression pants at night?”

“I missed _you._ I missed _us._ ”

“I won’t be able to keep my hands off of you,” says Scott in a rush, getting ahead of himself. “I mean, literally, it’s going to be my entire job description to — ” and Tessa interrupts him a little brusquely, “Compartmentalize.” More gently, she adds, “You can talk to the mental coach about keywords to help you keep your focus where we need it? Like, you know, when you can’t take your mind off of something and trying _not_ to think about it only makes it worse, you can kind of train yourself to accept a shortcut for an answer and move on from it? Instead of thinking about it or trying not to think about it?” She pauses meaningfully and Scott realizes. _Oh_.

“You mean, you thought sometimes… about me… too?” _Real smooth_ , he thinks, but Tessa is suddenly blushing so fiercely that he feels awful for embarrassing her. “No, never mind, don’t answer that — ” and she leans forward a little and touches him for the first time since they sat down together, just her fingertips against his cheek and only for a moment, which Scott feels like an electric shock.  “Well, we were busy!” she says, matter-of-factly, “and I didn’t want — ” he finishes her sentence for her “ — to distract you.”

Tessa leans back in her chair and wraps her arms around herself. Every nerve in Scott’s body is screaming to reach out for her. Anticipating his next move, she looks him in the eye and says, “We can’t have any distractions, Scott, not if we mean it.”

“But only until PyeongChang.”

“Only until _after_ PyeongChang.”

“But, like, _right_ after.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” says Scott, taking a deep breath. “I think we can handle it, if you think we can.”

“Starting right now, though,” adds Tessa, still flushed and breathing a little hard, Scott notices. She’s twisting her hands together in her lap.

“We’ll keep it professional, yes. Let’s shake on it,” he says, and she does, giggling, but her hand trembles in his, and they both linger awkwardly before letting go.

❧

It’s easy, and it isn’t. Their new training schedule keeps them busier than ever and they’re both grateful for the exhaustion at the end of each day. Tessa organizes a series of punishing press blitzes for their comeback, because of course she does. Close working relationship, special bond, platonic, platonic, platonic, none of it untrue.

Scott was right that he couldn’t keep his hands off of her — “What’s a little heavy petting between colleagues?” he whispers to her during one of their warmups, his hand cupped around his mouth, and Tessa almost loses it when he nips her earlobe — but she was right about the keyword thing.

They make it work.

❧

By the time they arrive back in Ontario they’re both ragged with jet lag and the cough that swept through Team Canada in the last days of the Games. Tessa is exhausted like Scott’s never seen, and he shepherds her through the media scrum and the crowd of well-wishers that had gathered to greet them at Pearson, deflects an overly personal question from a reporter about the contents of her refrigerator, wraps a supportive arm around her shoulders and holds her upright for photos, steers her to the gate for their connecting flight, folds her coat and tucks it into the overhead bin, digs through her purse to unearth her chapstick for her, flags down a flight attendant for more icewater, slouches to afford her a more comfortable angle for a nap against his shoulder, breathes in the scent of her hair, traces slow circles on the palm of her hand with his fingertip.

Their families are waiting for them when they arrive in London. Scott thinks he sees Alma and Kate exchange a look when Tessa suggests, in a tone of affected blandness, that she and Scott should just crash at her place until they get their bearings. Blessedly, neither of them says a thing.

❧

“So,” says Scott, as he closes the door of Tessa’s childhood bedroom behind them with a click. “About our agreement. I think my obligations have all been discharged. What was the consideration again?”

Tessa turns and moves toward him, her expression solemn. “So you _have_ been listening to what I’ve been telling you about our contract negotiations.”

“Tessa Virtue, for my whole life I have hung on your every word —” he begins, but she takes another step to close the distance between them and cuts him off with a kiss so soft he can hardly bear it.

❧

For probably fifteen years she has daydreamed about it, but Tessa is still shocked by the realization that this is their first real kiss, not a fumbling practice kiss like when they were kids, not a gallant performance of a kiss for the cameras, not one of Scott’s teasing not-quite-kisses in the runup to PyeongChang. It hardly seems real to her at all until she feels Scott softly part her lips with the tip of his tongue. She gasps into his mouth as it hits her all at once.

“Tess, this is —” Scott pulls back and starts to say something, but she leans into him and kisses back harder, biting his lip, unbuttoning her black and red Team Canada flannel shirt, grabbing his hand and bringing it to her breast. Scott’s always been a quick study and he gets the idea, pushing her lightly backward and off balance, tugging her shirt off of her shoulders, unhooking her bra and brushing his thumbs roughly over her aching nipples, unbuttoning her jeans and pulling them and her underwear halfway off. Teetering, she nearly falls, and Scott scoops her up and sets her on the edge of the bed, her ankles still tangled in her jeans.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he says, “but if you don’t mind, I have an idea,” and then he’s kneeling in front of her. She feels his hands cup her ass and pull her toward him as he kisses her collarbone, her breasts, her sternum, her stomach, and then, _oh_ , she whimpers as she feels his teeth on the inside of her thigh. It’s a sound she knows he has never heard from her before, and she hears him swear under his breath but he doesn’t stop, methodically working his way slowly upward, leaving a trail of bruises that Tessa knows in the back of her mind that she’ll be admiring in the mirror all week, which doesn’t make her any less impatient.

Tessa buries both her hands in his hair and tries to wriggle the rest of the way out of her jeans so she can wrap her legs around his shoulders and press herself against his mouth already before the anticipation kills her, which it _feels_ like it maybe will anyway, but Scott stops her with his hands on her knees. He looks up and whispers, “Tess, we have time. Please let me take my time,” and the tenderness in his expression makes her heart stop.  Years of practice at deferring the question of Scott melt away in a flood, and she’s so wet with longing, but. “Yes,” she whispers back, and he whispers, “Thank you,” and then “I love you,” and finally, finally he kisses her aching cunt, as softly as he had kissed her mouth for the first time, and finally, finally, finally he slides one finger inside her, then two, then three. She rocks her hips hard against him as he presses deeper inside her, but it's the feeling of his teeth lightly scraping her clit that makes her come so forcefully she surprises herself, with a great shuddering gasp.

Scott crawls up onto the bed beside her and kisses her deeply. She loves the taste of herself on his lips and tongue, and Scott loves that she loves it, she can tell how hard it's making him, but when she reaches for the waistband of his jeans, he playfully pushes her hand away. “Not on the first date, Tess!” She groans in dismay but laughs, too, in spite of herself. “Is that what this is?”

"Actually, this is as far as I planned. It's, you know, all I could think about since we started developing Roxanne."

"Ah," says Tessa. "Well, I mean, it's not like I haven't been thinking about it too, it's just." She feels him nod. "Compartmentalized," he says. "Exactly."

It's just beginning to hit her, how delirious with exhaustion she is, how underslept she's been for days now. "How much downtime did you schedule before our next media stuff?" Scott asks her. "Like three days?"

"Scott, an entire week! I'm not a masochist." He pulls her onto his chest and wraps his arms around her, and she finally has the presence of mind to shuck off the tangle of jeans. "I mean, I guess we'll see about that," he says, "You mean the week off? Because I mean it, it's really scheduled, I thought we'd need it," and then it occurs to her what he may have meant, and she starts laughing again, and then she's laughing and crying with relief, or something, she can't tell, she's too overwhelmed to think straight.

"My favourite sound," says Scott, and kisses the top of her head. "Sleep it off, Tess. We'll figure it out tomorrow."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tessa maintains a mental list of everything that they do figure out in the weeks that follow. It’s not a plan about whatever their future together might be. Mostly, she thinks, it’s angles.

After the adrenaline high of competition, it takes Tessa a couple of rest days to come all the way back to her body, which she eventually does with a jolt, with Scott inside her. He feels her wince underneath him and stops immediately, pushing himself up on his elbows — "Sorry, Tess, should I —" and she stops him, "No, it's not —" and it's her right hip, she realizes, which throbs like hell when she has her leg hitched up around Scott's ribs. _Hmm_.

She extends the leg experimentally, brushing her heel lightly down Scott’s thigh and landing on his calf, and feels another twinge of protest from the recalcitrant joint. Scott’s angle is so much shallower now that she’s frustrated, tries tipping her pelvis forward to meet him, can’t do it without aggravating the hip. Scott is watching her, still propped up on his elbows, keeping his weight off of her. “Interesting sex move. How’s it going down there?” he asks.

“Hang on,” she says, and pushes him off of her and onto his back, swings her leg over him, but as soon as she settles back down with him inside her again she realizes that it’ll be no dice on the hip flexion from this approach either. “Scott, I’m sorry, I can’t,” she says. “The hip?” he asks. “Yeah,” she says, wincing again, contemplating her dismount. “Here,” says Scott, reaching up to wrap his hands around her waist and lifting her up and off. She settles next to him and stretches gingerly. “Gimme a few minutes,” she starts to say. “No way,” he interrupts. “Just us, right? We don’t have to work through anything, we can just stop.”

The thought had somehow not occurred to Tessa. “Oh! I’m, uh, out of practice at stopping.” Too bad we waited until we don’t have physio every day to work out the kinks, she thinks but does not say aloud.

“I mean, we don’t have to _stop_ stop,” says Scott. “How about a course correction.” He slides his hand between her legs and lets her find her own angle before slipping three fingers into her, curling them inside her, stroking her with his thumb. It’s not quite what she wanted, but he leans down to kiss her softly as he works her over and she comes after a little while, Scott half-pinning her to the mattress to keep her from bucking her hips against his hand, and it will have to do.

After that, they fuck with more delicacy and restraint.

Scott, a diligent historian of her injuries, knew more about their duration and severity than anyone else, although she had never been entirely full and frank even with him. He favours her hip for her, arranges their bodies so she won’t be tempted to jerk him off with her right hand and risk straining the wrist he’s seen her sprain at least three times, makes sure she’s never bearing the weight of his body with the strength of her calves.

She returns the favour, always half-supporting her own weight when he wants to fuck her against the wall so he doesn’t feel it later in his back, gently pushing him off the bed and onto his knees on the floor when he wants to taste her, so he doesn’t hurt his neck.

“Very tactful,” he observes. “I never want to see you hurt like you were before Finlandia again,” she says truthfully. “You really think I’ll herniate a disc?” he jokes, but she does worry. He wasn’t kidding about how badly he wanted this, he’s insatiable for her, he devours her reverently, like a sacrament, but with no more than ten degrees of lateral flexion or extension required, just to be on the safe side, she sees to it.

She can feel her body, her archive of pain, unfurling like a flower in response to an intimacy she had not thought to ask from anyone before. It becomes what she wanted.

And later, sprawled on Scott's couch, with two throw pillows under the small of her back, her knees Scott's shoulder width apart and no further, her thighs resting on either side of his neck, her heels pressed lightly against his back, for a few minutes Tessa feels no pain at all.


End file.
